by Helen Dewitt
He could hardly speak for laughing.
My mother, I said, called the Samaritans once and asked whether research had been done on thwarted suicides to find out whether they had spent the time after the incident happily.
What did they say?
They said they didn’t know.
He grinned.
I said
Sibylla said
He said
Who?
I said My mother. She said they should recruit people like Oscar Wilde, only there isn’t anyone like Oscar Wilde. If there were enough people like Oscar Wilde so that you could staff Samaritans with them, no one would want to commit suicide anyway—they would joke themselves out of a job. You could call and someone would say
Do you smoke?
And you’d say
Yes.
And they’d say Good. A man needs an occupation.
My mother called once and the person kept saying Yes and I hear what you’re saying, which would have been reassuring if my mother had been worried about being inaudible.
So my mother said
Do you smoke?
And the Samaritan said
Sorry?
And my mother said
Do you smoke?
And the Samaritan said
No
And my mother said
You should. A man needs an occupation.
And the Samaritan said
Sorry?
And my mother said
That’s all right. It’s your life. If you want to throw it away, fine.
Then she ran out of 10p coins.
I said
It’s your life, but you should give things a chance. You know what Jonathan Glover says.
He said
No, what does Jonathan Glover say? And who is Jonathan Glover?
I said
Jonathan Glover is a modern Utilitarian, and the author of Causing Death and Saving Lives. He says before committing suicide you should change your job, leave your wife, leave the country.
I said
Would it help to leave your job, leave your wife and children, leave the country?
He said
No. It would help a little not to have to fake it all the time. But wherever I went I’d see the same things. I used to think I’d like to see the Himalayas before I died. I thought I’d like to see Tierra del Fuego. The South Pacific—I’ve heard that’s beautiful. But wherever I went I’d see a child clubbed to death with the butt of a rifle and soldiers laughing. There’s nothing I can do to get it out of my mind.
He looked at his glass.
He said
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
That weighs upon the heart
He said
Therein the patient
Must minister to himself
He put his head on his hand.
He said
It is a pretty story.
He said
The world would be quite a pretty place if the only people tormented by atrocities were those who’d committed them. Would you like another Coke?
I asked whether I could have orange juice instead.
He went to the refrigerator with his glass. He came back with the glass and a can of Coke.
He said
I don’t mean it wasn’t hard on my wife. She had to shoulder responsibility. She had to write a lot of letters to people who weren’t very helpful. She had to keep going for the sake of the children.
I said
Does she want to die?
He said
I don’t think so.
He said after a pause
It changed her a lot. She became much less
He said
Or rather she became much more
He said
That is she turned into the kind of person who
He said
That is she developed a lot of skills. She organised a successful campaign, you know, that is she organised a campaign that was successful as a campaign, it had a lot of supporters who gave money when she wrote to ask them for money and went on demonstrations when she told them there was going to be a demonstration and wrote letters to their MP when she said everyone should write to their MP. The papers published her letters when she wrote letters and they covered the demonstrations when there were demonstrations, and she got interviewed on radio and TV on a regular basis. That kind of thing doesn’t just happen, you know. Anyway once it happens you become quite confident that you can get that kind of thing to happen.
He said
Would you like another Coke?
I said OK.
He came back with another drink. He said he was sorry but they were out of Coke, he had brought me an orange juice instead.
He said
It sort of spoiled things for the campaign, in a way, my just escaping like that. Apparently negotiations had reached quite a promising stage or anyway my wife thinks they looked quite promising, I could have jeopardised everything by just making a run for it. It’s irritating for her to have this have-a-go-Grandad type of attitude to deal with because she thinks it was just luck that it worked whereas she doesn’t think that if a campaign works that’s luck. It’s not that it’s a major irritant, more of a minor irritant, it’s just that I had to keep hiding how happy I was to see the dog. He practically went insane as soon as I came into the room, it was all I could do not to or actually I think I did break down and it wasn’t as if he’d developed any media skills worth mentioning or made a significant contribution to the campaign or anything. What I mean is that my wife had spent, well all of them had spent five years making progress or facing setbacks whereas I’d just spent five years
He said
So obviously when the dog died
He said
Well anyway it’s past history. You’re bored, I’m bored, you’re bored or if you’re not you would be if you’d spent as much time thinking about it
I said
Have you read that book by Graham Greene?
He said
Which book by Graham Greene?
I said
The one where he kills his wife in a mercy killing and is tormented by the memory and then he loses his memory in an explosion?
He said
Oh that one. You read Graham Greene?
I said
Only that one and Travels with My Aunt. I liked Travels with My Aunt better. My mother read the other one and she thought: that’s it, I’ll get amnesia. So she tried banging her head on walls but she couldn’t even knock herself out, and then she remembered that she’d once been knocked out by a car and she could remember everything when she came to. So she read a lot of articles on amnesia but they weren’t very helpful. Then she thought: What about a hypnotist? People are always going to hypnotists and remembering things they’d forgotten that happened to them as a child, or in a previous existence when they were Cleopatra—why shouldn’t it work just as well the other way?
He said
Now there’s a grand idea. You go to the doctor a nervous wreck and come home Cleopatra Queen of the Nile.
I said
So she called the Samaritans.
He said
And what did they say?
I said
They said they didn’t know. So she called a lot of hypnotists and they all said this was an unhealthy attitude & hypnosis as a tool of psychotherapy was aimed at helping people to confront things & no ethical practitioner would contemplate and my mother said well what about an unethical practitioner? Suppose she found a rogue hypnotist, the kind who would fornicate with the unresisting body of his subject and steal her credit cards and her cashcard and ask her cashcard PIN number and take the pearls she got for her 18th birthday, would somebody like that be able to make her forget everything that had happened in the last
10 years or so?
He said
And what did they say?
I said
They hung up.
He said
So then what happened?
I said
She tried to kill herself.
He said
That must have been hard for you.
I said
Oh that was before I was born. I think she regrets it when people make fatuous remarks but now that she has me she thinks it would be irresponsible—sorry.
He said
It doesn’t matter. It’s what anyone would think. I did write the book, you know. I wrote the book and gave a lot of interviews and signed copies—funny the things people will buy.
He stood up and walked up and down. He went to the window and said
What a glorious day!
He said
Do you think sales will go up?
I said the signed copies would be worth more anyway. He said he was a fool not to have thought of it but anyway he’d given all his author’s copies to prominent supporters of the campaign.
I was still feeling bad for having said my mother thought it would be irresponsible, and I was about to say that the cases were different because I didn’t really have a father when I remembered that I’d said he was. Then I thought maybe it would not be too bad to say: Well, I grew up without a father and I’m all right, I mean I don’t think I’d have been better off if somebody had gone through ten years of hell to be there. Then I suddenly thought, that is I suddenly thought that at that very moment Sibylla was at home teaching the Little Prince. What if at that very moment she had taken out a bottle of pills and said if she could not be a person without a past she would be a person with no future and the Little Prince had said That’s all right you go right ahead?
He was still standing by the window. There were four African violets on the sill; he was running his thumb over the fuzz on a leaf. He was whistling under his breath.
I haven’t described him well or at all. He was right in a way that it began to get boring after a while, but in another way it didn’t really matter what he said. You could see that he was someone who could make someone who had seen his male relatives lined up and shot at the age of four and his female relatives raped and then shot want to play chess. When you were with him you wanted to go on being with him whatever he said. When you made a joke and he laughed you wanted to do ten handsprings. I wished I had had him around for ten years or even five even though he was probably the kind of parent who set limits and even though it was hard to imagine him fitting into the kind of lifestyle where you could learn Greek at a reasonable age and even though the one boy and one girl had probably watched Sesame Street and he probably thought it was about the right level. And I started thinking: What if he changed his mind?
Then I thought: What if Sibylla told the Little Prince what she wants to forget? When I asked her she always said Never you mind or Well anyway I don’t know why I complain it’s not as if I was tortured. At least I hadn’t said that. I thought: I want him to try to go on getting over it so I can go on seeing him. I thought it was weak and cowardly to want this and it was weak and cowardly to want the Little Prince to say give it more time and if I were weak and cowardly I really would be my father’s son. But I couldn’t say you go right ahead.
I said
Do you want to give Oscar Wilde a chance?
He said
What?
I said
We could watch The Importance of Being Earnest. I could go to Blockbuster Video and get it out.
He said
That’s OK.
Then he said
Well, OK.
I went out the front door. We kept the video card in my pocket because Sibylla tended to lose things, and I had £1.50. I ran all the way to Blockbuster Video just in case he decided to take the pills before I got back.
The set-up in Blockbuster was different from the one we went to, so it took a while to find the video. They had Seven Samurai, but so many people in it say it’s better to die than face certain misery that I thought it would be better not to risk it. They had Ace Ventura Pet Detective which I had always wanted to see but Sibylla refused to get out; I suspected, however, that this might not be as efficacious as the Wilde. At last I found it. I had to argue for a long time with the girl at the register because our card was for a different branch.
I said
Please. I have to have it. It’s a matter of life and death.
She said
Don’t overdo it
I said
No really it’s for a man who’s thinking of committing suicide he was held hostage and tortured and it haunts him and I thought maybe just maybe The Importance of Being Earnest would do the trick because when my mother feels depressed it cheers her up to walk on the Wilde side.
She said
Really.
I said
Well no not really it’s for my sister she’s doing A-levels and they always ask a question about comparing the play with the film only she never had a chance to see the film. Our dad’s unemployed so she has to work part-time so she never had the time and now the exam is tomorrow, and if she doesn’t do well on the exam she won’t get her grade for university because English is her best subject and it’s too late to do anything about French and Sociology. According to a recent survey in the Independent more and more employers expect employees to have a university degree.
She said
Third time lucky
I said
Well actually it’s for my two little brothers. Siamese twins, they were inseparable from birth and did everything together. If one does something the other must too, but unfortunately their heads are inconveniently placed so that they cannot watch the same television screen at the same time. We tried mirrors but then whichever one got the mirror complained. A disability allowance from a generous government has covered the cost of an extra television and video set, a single copy of Aladdin, and one towel. One night The Importance of Being Earnest in the classic Redgrave/Denison production was shown by the BBC; both twins were able to watch, enthralled. Unfortunately my mother did not have two videotapes on which to record the film—foreseeing trouble, she did not record it at all! To no avail, for having seen it once they must see it again—and a pair of Siamese twins, once enraged, makes a noise which cannot easily be ignored. In despair did my mother venture forth to our local Blockbuster, only to find that they had but a single copy of the film. Fear not, said I, I will go to Notting Hill and get a second copy of the film; they have few enough pleasures as it is, God knows, and my mother agreed, for she was certain that Blockbuster would not let us down.
She said
Why didn’t you say so before
I said
You didn’t ask me before
I set off at my five-minute-mile sprint.
I went up to the front door again and knocked. He came to the door straight away.
He said
I’m sorry, I should have given you some money.
I said that was all right. He looked brighter than he had before. He led me down a hall to a room at the back of the house where they kept the TV and VCR. He had put some crisps in a bowl and some peanuts in another bowl.
I turned on the TV and VCR and put the film in. There were some ads for the Classic Collection and then the film began.
He sat in his chair watching the screen very seriously. He laughed when Lady Bracknell said Should you become engaged I, or your father if his health permits, will inform you of the fact and he laughed at some of the other jokes. After a while I forgot about him.
After a while I looked over to see whether he was enjoying the film.
He had turned his head to one side. His cheeks were wet.
He said
This isn’t going to work.
I turned off the video and pressed rewind.
He said
It’s not going to work and I haven’t got a lot of time. They’re o
nly going for a few days. It was worth a try though.
He said
This has helped in a way, anyway. I’ve some letters to write. I didn’t think I’d be able to because I think the important thing is to say I love them and I find it quite hard to say that because I’ve really only felt anything for the dog since I got back. I’ve said it of course but there’s something that won’t let me make a lie my last word. I think I can live with a penultimate lie. Whereas it can’t hurt you to hear the truth.
He said
This will probably take some time. You can go or stay as you like.
I said I would stay if that was all right.
I followed him upstairs to his desk. He sat down and got out several sheets of paper and wrote Dear Marie.
I went to sit in a chair. I took out Thucydides and began to read the stasis at Corcyra.
A couple of hours went by. I got up and went to the desk; he was looking down at a sheet of paper on which were written the words Dear Marie.
He said
It’s just an accident it turned out this way. I was in Beirut for a long time, but a lot of people were there a long time. Sometimes you think you’ll go berserk watching the it’s frustrating but there’s a lot to do. You spend so much time trying to organise transportation to some place where you hear something’s going on, or trying to make contacts, or trying to anyway you’re always pretty busy, even so it gets to you but then you all get drunk and talk. Once I was caught there was absolutely nothing to do but think. Lie on the floor thinking will Clinton do this will the UN do that without the distraction of if I talk to this person about that jeep. It’s stupid. If I’d gone out and got drunk with some mates before I left it probably wouldn’t have or at least it would always have been but at least it wouldn’t have been anyway other people seem to adjust insofar as you can adjust and I would probably have adjusted.
He said
maladjusted by a simple twist of fate. It’s hard to know what to write.
He said
Is it patronising to say what you think someone would like you to be able to say? Or should I say
He said
You know what I’d really like?
I said
Apart from the obvious